CD Projekt Working Hard on 'Cyberpunk 2077'

By Kyree Leary 15 February 2018

CD Projekt Red’s latest, The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt is currently out and about and making the rounds, and based on the game’s impressive sales numbers and performance in May, it’s safe to say that the developer must be pretty pleased with itself.

There’s still more to come for Geralt in the form of two expansions and whatever updates still in the works, but now that the main game is out, it’s difficult to not shift focus to CD Projekt’s other in-development game: Cyberpunk 2077. It’s been quite some time since it was initially revealed, and while a few details have trickled out over the years, very little is known about the upcoming game.

The studio has already stated it wouldn’t discuss Cyberpunk 2077 until 2017, with The Witcher 3 being their main focus for the next couple of years, but company CEO Marcin Iwinski, and Head of Marketing Michal Platkow Gilewski, broke the silence early during an interview with IGN.

Expectations should be tempered, however, as the pair merely reassured fans that they’re still “hard at work” on the sci-fi RPG. It’s certainly not much of an update, but considering how long its been since they’ve shown anything from Cyberpunk, some may have developed concerns regarding its progress.

E3 is usually the place where big games are announced, or where games that have been out of the spotlight for a while suddenly return – as demonstrated this year by The Last Guardian. It wouldn’t have been unreasonable to think Cyberpunk 2077 would get a status update during the event – such is the case right now.

Of course, some are probably wondering why they even announced Cyberpunk 2077 with such an impressive debut trailer if they had no plans to talk about it. As Iwinski explains, the trailer was meant to draw a reaction from people; CD Projekt wanted to “see how gamers felt about it.” Fortunately, many took a liking to the trailer and what it had to show, which is probably why interest in it hasn’t completely evaporated.

Said Iwinski during the interview:

We were super excited about the project internally, but what if it wasn’t the right thing [for us]? But the response has been incredible. Now it’s just up to us to deliver.

The positive response to Cyberpunk also helped to maintain the studio’s enthusiam towards working on a game set in a new world and setting. Regardless of what it ends up being, it’s sure to be something very different compared to The Witcher series.

As Iwinski put it, later in the interview:

You can craft swords for 12 years, but you might get burnt out. People might want to leave and go work on something else. We’re excited to switch to guns. We intended to keep [the team] energized with Cyberpunk. The core team is working The Witcher 3’s expansions, but more and more people are moving over onto Cyberpunk.

Are you still excited for Cyberpunk 2077, and do you hope to still be excited for it come 2017? Excitement is easy to hold onto in the short term, but over time, and without anything to keep it going, it can quickly die out. That said, other games have taken longer to release, but still managed to do just fine.